


Lion's Heart

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, POV Harry Potter, Pre-Canon, Pre-Hogwarts, Reincarnation, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-09-29 22:35:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10146113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: His teachers all agree that Harry Potter is a strange boy, but they have no idea exactly how strange.(Harry is the reincarnation of Regulus Black and retains his memories.)





	

Harry was a _strange_ boy. All his teachers had said so, when they thought he was out of their hearing — too quiet and serious, too clever, to be normal. They placed such ridiculous importance on normality in Little Whinging. It made him want to laugh, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d genuinely laughed.

He hadn’t tried to catch their attention, but clever boys caught teachers’ attention, no matter how hard he struggled to do as poorly in class as Dudley did.

Harry was eight when Mrs Saunders had him tested, to get him put in a higher year or into specialised classes, but he never heard anything about it again. She never told him what his scores were, but he knew he hadn’t failed. Mrs Saunders wouldn’t look at him with fear and confusion in her eyes if he had failed.

It was the fear that made him do it. Harry was well-accustomed to seeing scorn in the eyes of adults when they looked at him and his brother (but he didn’t have a brother, only a cousin), but fear was new. Fear reminded him of that crying girl with the dark eyes (he’d never met her, so he’d never hurt her) and of the house-elf (he didn’t even know what a house-elf _was_ ).

He would not have done it at all if she hadn’t scolded him in front of the entire class for not paying attention to a lesson they’d already done, but she did. She did, so he did.

One second, her wig was an unconvincing blonde. The next, it was blue.

The other students giggled, some openly and some behind their hands, which made old Mrs Saunders blink and stare at them in confusion. “Your _hair!_ ” Maisie Conroy shrieked before breaking into an even louder fit of laughter.

Mrs Saunders shrieked too after she grabbed a lock of hair and got a good look at it.

Harry didn’t giggle. Harry smirked, and Mrs Saunders blanched. _Normal boys_ couldn’t turn their teacher’s wigs blue, and _normal boys_ didn’t smirk.

He didn’t have Mrs Saunders for much longer after that, but she must have warned all the other teachers because they too looked at him with frowns when the summer holidays ended and they returned to school. Mr Davies was his teacher, this year, and he was patient and warm with everyone except Harry. Mrs Saunders, after all, was a _reasonable_ woman.

Mr Davies kept a careful eye on him, so Harry was careful in return. _You don’t need to make waves,_ he told himself. _You can pass unnoticed if you try._

He managed well enough until Mr Davies began teaching them astronomy.

Harry knew almost everything his teachers taught him already — it wasn’t like the basics differed from world to world, though the logic behind them sometimes did —, but astronomy was always his best subject.

(His best subject _where_?)

Mr Davies lectured on and on while Harry’s fellow students drew pictures of red dwarves without understanding the magic of it — not even the science behind it. “The brightest star in the constellation Leo is called the Heart of the Lion or the Little King, but does anyone know its _proper_ name?” the teacher asked.

Harry raised his hand. He couldn’t help himself. “Regulus,” he answered unhesitatingly.

He returned to his drawing with renewed vigour, and he even distinguished the star Sirius by drawing two grey stars instead of one yellow one like the rest of the students did.

“I know they’re white stars, but they wouldn’t show up that way,” he told Mr Davies when he turned it in. He couldn’t pretend to be sorry when he was this happy and sad all at once, and the teacher’s brow furrowed.

(Sirius would know what to do. Well, maybe not, but he’d pretend like he did.)

He didn’t give Harry extra credit for it, but he did him one better — he went to his teacher next year, Miss Wellesley, and told her not to worry about the rumours Mrs Saunders had spread. Harry saw the two of them talking quietly while looking at him, and Miss Wellesley smiled at him when their eyes met. What else could they be talking about?

Miss Wellesley was young enough to retain her optimism in the face of the parents of Little Whinging, and she was the nicest teacher he had ever had besides. Patient, clever, and kind. That was why he confided in her when she wished him good luck at the local secondary school.

“I won’t be going to Stonewall,” Harry said with complete assurance after listening to her lengthy lecture about the British education system, ending in an explanation as to why Stonewall was just as good as Smeltings — one that neither he nor she believed.

“You’re not? But, Harry, your aunt and uncle already put you down to attend this year,” Miss Wellesley informed him gently.

It was the gentleness that made him do it.

Harry shrugged and tried to act like a normal ten-year-old. “I know, but I won’t go there.” He didn’t know how to explain it without sounding mad. “There is another school. I — I heard about it. My parents went there, and I will too.”

(He remembered his parents, but not as his parents — Evans with her sharp, wild laugh and Potter with his wicked grin and Sirius’s arm slung over his shoulders.)

Miss Wellesley did not have it in her to disappoint his hopes, so she only smiled again and said that he would be a gift for any school that had him.

“It’s all thanks to you, miss.”

Harry smirked.

(He had better practise acting normally before he came face-to-face with the likes of Albus Dumbledore and his merry men. But Sirius would be there to help him. They had to help each other — to make up for past wrongs. This time he and his brother would be on the same side from the start. That would make all the difference.)


End file.
